No more Captains in High School?

[Unregistered]

The coach is now the captain on these teams. Although they may sound minor, things like the end of season banquets, team dinners, pre-game talks, etc. will now have to be coordinated by the coaches. I think a lot of coaches are control freaks and will probably enjoy that they control everything. They may appoint a 'team manager' who is not a player to take care of the miscell. dirty work rather than using the coaches.

You have to be a control freak much of the time to succeed as a HS coach. A season has the potential to become absolutely chaotic if you don't exert control. That being said you still need captains. The two concepts are not mutually exclusive.

I think the importance of captains vary from sport to sport but from level to level.

For baseball and softball it is less important.

Hockey very important. For HS sports in general it is more important than in the pro and even college ranks. This is because with 14-18 year olds you have widely variable levels of maturity. The older the players are the more this evens out.

To me this would be like arguing that having a Class President should be abolished and that the entire student body should be co-Presidents. If you have the right people in place these roles are important places for students to learn how to use liasons to authority and to also understand whether they like it or not that throughout their lives that they are going to occupy a certain niche in the various hierarchies that they will be involved in. I know people who are Elders in a Church but that are janitors at an elementary school. I know people who are CEO's but are perfectly happy being a "quiet man" bass player in a band on weekends.

HS is a place to learn how to deal with all these kinds of situations in life. L-S is really not accomplishing anything worthwhile by doing this other than appeasing a few parents who can't deal with their kid not getting a "trophy". Given my past but admittedly limited experience with parents from Sudbury when my kid played for Boston Lightning I can't say that I am really surprised. Obviously it is hard to judge based on the behavior of 12 adults but it is what it is.

Cujo

[Unregistered]

This is what makes folks suspicious of the motives of people like you. If you don't think he's a great President, fine. Vote him out. He won't have trouble finding a high paying job. But don't grossly distort the facts. You or another poster made a claim that we know less about this President than any President in history. Please explain. I would like to hear your argument. He's written two lengthy books, gone through brutal campaigns and vetting, and he's never failed to answer a question. So, please, tell us all exactly what you mean by that statement.

Just another teaparty nut who thinks Obama is the Muslim anti-christ whose path to power began in 1962 when the nascent Islamist cabal planted birth notices for a baby named Barrack Hussein Obama in the Honolulu Times.

I recently ran into one of these nuts in my home town when I was trying to get some documents approved by the town. He noticed that I was born in New Mexico and said "I need to see proof of US citizenship". On the way out I noticed a Crown Victoria in the lot with a Palin bumper sticker. I assumed that was his car.

Cujo

[Unregistered]

Just another teaparty nut who thinks Obama is the Muslim anti-christ whose path to power began in 1962 when the nascent Islamist cabal planted birth notices for a baby named Barrack Hussein Obama in the Honolulu Times.

I recently ran into one of these nuts in my home town when I was trying to get some documents approved by the town. He noticed that I was born in New Mexico and said "I need to see proof of US citizenship". On the way out I noticed a Crown Victoria in the lot with a Palin bumper sticker. I assumed that was his car.

Cujo

Please take all this crap (from both sides) to the politics thread.

[Beachbum]

Please take all this crap (from both sides) to the politics thread.

Agreed...If not, I will. The focus of this thread is "Team Captains", not politics.

[Unregistered]

Agreed...If not, I will. The focus of this thread is "Team Captains", not politics.

So all the other 90 posters get a free pass for their political posts and I post one brief retort and you jump down my throat. Practice fairness much??

[Unregistered]

So you're going to make a provocative statement and not explain it. That's what I thought. Why don't you go to Borders and buy one of his books? Now he's part of the elite ruling class? Don't think he spent all his summers growing up on Cape Cod or Kennebunkport. Wow.

I've read his books, and I am now reading his lastest book of fiction called " The Summer of Recovery "

[MASC]

Cujo is spot onin his analysis.

Soccer teams don't need captains. Teams should have captains. Where are the youth supposed to learn leadership skills?

In any case, the public schools are not intended to produce leaders and those who have the misfortune to have to send their children to such are seeing that in practice. All who can afford it in L-S are sending their children to the ISL schools or out of state boarding schools.

This latest action merely reveals the truth.

[Unregistered]

Cujo is spot onin his analysis.

Soccer teams don't need captains. Teams should have captains. Where are the youth supposed to learn leadership skills?

In any case, the public schools are not intended to produce leaders and those who have the misfortune to have to send their children to such are seeing that in practice. All who can afford it in L-S are sending their children to the ISL schools or out of state boarding schools.

This latest action merely reveals the truth.

Only the rich can produce leaders; you are indeed wise.

Not from L-S, but the product of public schools and my kids go public as well. L-S is trying something and maybe it will work and maybe not. My daughter's team had crap captains last year, and the kids learned more about what leadership and bullying was from them than they did from the good captains the previous year. Coach was a little more circumspect about his criteria for picking captains this year. The natural leaders showed up despite the bad captains. Title of captain is nice, but as it's only for a few, the cream is going to rise to the top.

I don't particularly like the idea of kids voting for captains. Popularity contests don't produce leaders.

[Unregistered]

Cujo is spot onin his analysis.

Soccer teams don't need captains. Teams should have captains. Where are the youth supposed to learn leadership skills?

In any case, the public schools are not intended to produce leaders and those who have the misfortune to have to send their children to such are seeing that in practice. All who can afford it in L-S are sending their children to the ISL schools or out of state boarding schools.

This latest action merely reveals the truth.

All??? You don't live in Lincoln or Sudbury if you believe that or you certainly don't know the net worth of many of your wealthy neighbors who send their children to that 'horrible' LS high school if you do. I'd like to be as poor as those Hedge Fund/VC/PE types who live in the area who send their kids to the public high school.

[Unregistered]

Only the rich can produce leaders; you are indeed wise.

Not from L-S, but the product of public schools and my kids go public as well. L-S is trying something and maybe it will work and maybe not. My daughter's team had crap captains last year, and the kids learned more about what leadership and bullying was from them than they did from the good captains the previous year. Coach was a little more circumspect about his criteria for picking captains this year. The natural leaders showed up despite the bad captains. Title of captain is nice, but as it's only for a few, the cream is going to rise to the top.

I don't particularly like the idea of kids voting for captains. Popularity contests don't produce leaders.

You don't give young people enough credit. I do not think my players ever made a bad judgment in selecting captains. If I thought they did I would have disallowed it. It was never a popularity contest but was typically the best players and kids who were leaders elsewhere in school. Most of my captains were also in student government, yearbook committee, school newspaper etc. That being said they also needed to be players. It is difficult to lead if you can't get it done on the field.

Shame on the coach for allowing bullying to occur. I suspect that your sour grapes attitude has more to do with other issues however.

Captains are necessary and my personal opinion is that it is the players team first and that they need to pick their leaders. Coaches function best when they operate as a benevolent dictatorship.

[Unregistered]

I don't particularly like the idea of kids voting for captains. Popularity contests don't produce leaders.

My kids high school team has four captains. Two of them don't know much about the rules of the game (sort of like most parents). What kind of example are they setting for the underclassmen? Its like Patton having to Google what a tank is.

[Unregistered]

I don't particularly like the idea of kids voting for captains. Popularity contests don't produce leaders.

If this is true in your school, I think this speaks more to the rest of the team than the captains that are voted for. Some players actually do choose the right players to be captains and it has nothing to do with popularity but the ability to lead. Leadership comes in all varieties, and I for one give credit to the players who can see what it takes to be a good leader and teammate.

[Unregistered]

My kids high school team has four captains. Two of them don't know much about the rules of the game (sort of like most parents). What kind of example are they setting for the underclassmen? Its like Patton having to Google what a tank is.

I find this difficult to believe. What division and what was their record last year?

[Unregistered]

Just another teaparty nut who thinks Obama is the Muslim anti-christ whose path to power began in 1962 when the nascent Islamist cabal planted birth notices for a baby named Barrack Hussein Obama in the Honolulu Times.

I recently ran into one of these nuts in my home town when I was trying to get some documents approved by the town. He noticed that I was born in New Mexico and said "I need to see proof of US citizenship". On the way out I noticed a Crown Victoria in the lot with a Palin bumper sticker. I assumed that was his car.

Cujo

You are a beaut Cujo and pretty much represent a typical leftie who criticizes the other side all while doing exactly that which you criticize.

[dd2]

While I find the L-S elimination of captains odd, I don't understand why the experiment encounters such hostility. Lots of social innovations get initially dismissed as crazy, but later prove to be good ideas. What, give women the right to vote? Let blacks play college basketball?

The appointment or election of captains is a time-honored athletic tradition. But not every team has one. The Red Sox had no captain for about 15 years before naming Varitek. And lest one argue that this arrangement hurt the Sox on the field, the Yankees had no captain while winning 4 world series titles from 1996-2000. So why is L-S necessarily crazy for trying to do without one? Being a captain takes a particular blend of athletic and social skill. It isn't obvious that a high school team has one (or more) every year.

So, instead of rolling our collective eyes and deriding L-S as Lake Wobegon kooks who don't recognize the inherent necessity of team captains, why don't we wait and see how it works? If it turns out to be that horrible for the children of Lincoln and Sudbury, I'm sure the parents of those communities will successfully get the school to appoint captains again.